“But reassurance can be the cruelest antidote to anxiety. Our rosy predictions both leave the anxious unprepared for the worst.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“But she's not even remotely coping inside: it takes a certain strength to cry, the confidence that one will eventually be able… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The forthrightness of the middle-aged seducer is rarely a matter of confidence or arrogance; it is instead a species of impatient despair… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“A fundamental truth, is that there is simply no such thing as an inherently boring person or thing. People are only in… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Katie Price is no exception. She, too, is - in a distinctive way - a philosopher. Partially, Katie Price's philosophy is one… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Yet conquering distance and gaining assurances that we are needed aren't exercises to be performed only once; they have to be repeated… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Good listeners are no less rare or important than good communicators. Here, too, an unusual degree of confidence is the key --… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“I strip myself emotionally when I confess need – that I would be lost without you, that I am not necessarily the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“To be mature is, we're told, to move beyond possessiveness. Jealousy is for babies. The mature person knows that no one owns anyone.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time—inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our passing desires… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety of elements… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We can then recognize that we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society has not… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
